Anna Faris explained why Chris Pratt wasn’t her best friend – and why that was a good thing

Anna Faris’s new book Unqualified comes out next month, and just as expected, it mentions her estranged husband Chris Pratt. Even though the couple announced their separation a month ago, it makes sense that her partner of eight years would make significant cameos in her memoir.

In an excerpt shared with Cosmopolitan, Faris writes about friendships and why Pratt wasn’t (and didn’t need to be) her best friend.

‘I was once told that I didn’t need a tight group of girlfriends because Chris should be my best friend. But I never bought that. The idea of your mate being your best friend — it’s overhyped. I really believe that your partner serves one purpose and each friend serves another.’

‘There’s the friend you confess things to and the friend with whom you do the listening. Or this is the person I talk to when I’m feeling lonely and sad, this is the person I talk to about work shit, and this is the friend I’m still in touch with because we grew up together.’

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We hear this sentiment a lot — that your romantic partner should or is also your best friend. Kudos to the couples who can have both, but we totally hear what Faris is saying. It’s a lot of pressure for one person to be so many things to you, and it also discounts the love and intimacy that true platonic best friends can have for one another.

Actually, Faris doesn’t like the term ‘best friend’ at all, and the older we get, the more we understand what she means.

‘To be honest, I think the notion of best friends in general is messed up though,’ she writes. ‘It puts so much pressure on any one person, when I truly believe it’s okay to have intimacy with different people in different ways. And ranking your friends? It just shouldn’t happen, at least not beyond grade school.’

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